3. III. AT THIRTY YEARS

Madame Firmiani was giving a ball. M. Charles de Vandenesse, a young
man of great promise, the bearer of one of those historic names which,
in spite of the efforts of legislation, are always associated with the
glory of France, had received letters of introduction to some of the
great lady's friends in Naples, and had come to thank the hostess and
to take his leave.

Vandenesse had already acquitted himself creditably on several
diplomatic missions; and now that he had received an appointment as
attache to a plenipotentiary at the Congress of Laybach, he wished to
take advantage of the opportunity to make some study of Italy on the
way. This ball was a sort of farewell to Paris and its amusements and
its rapid whirl of life, to the great eddying intellectual centre and
maelstrom of pleasure; and a pleasant thing it is to be borne along by
the current of this sufficiently slandered great city of Paris. Yet
Charles de Vandenesse had little to regret, accustomed as he had been
for the past three years to salute European capitals and turn his back
upon them at the capricious bidding of a diplomatist's destiny. Women
no longer made any impression upon him; perhaps he thought that a real
passion would play too large a part in a diplomatist's life; or
perhaps that the paltry amusements of frivolity were too empty for a
man of strong character. We all of us have huge claims to strength of
character. There is no man in France, be he ever so ordinary a member
of the rank and file of humanity, that will waive pretensions to
something beyond mere cleverness.

Charles, young though he was--he was scarcely turned thirty--looked at
life with a philosophic mind, concerning himself with theories and
means and ends, while other men of his age were thinking of pleasure,
sentiments, and the like illusions. He forced back into some inner
depth the generosity and enthusiasms of youth, and by nature he was
generous. He tried hard to be cool and calculating, to coin the fund
of wealth which chanced to be in his nature into gracious manners, and
courtesy, and attractive arts; 'tis the proper task of an ambitious
man, to play a sorry part to gain "a good position," as we call it in
modern days.